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The Future as Synthesis

The Future as Synthesis

Chapter:

(p.99)
7 The Future as Synthesis

Source:

Naked Genes

Author(s):

Helga Nowotny

Giuseppe Testa

Publisher:

The MIT Press

DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262014939.003.0007

The conviction that we stand before an epochal breakthrough with revolutionary possibilities has accompanied every technological vision. Yet we must not lose sight of the power to persist and the so-called “shock of the old”, whereby continuity of societal arrangements manifests itself in the face of the apparently most radical technologies. In this last chapter, we trace the triangulation among science, individuals, and institutions in shaping the future. First, we look at the increasingly global transformation of science into a kind of superorganism whose decentralized parts operate in networks. Its ingenuity impacts the life experiences of individuals whose identity and (multiple) affiliations are being determined anew, genetically as much as socially. In this fluid situation the most creative individuals are ready to take their destiny into their own hands. Yet, they could hardly succeed without robust and flexible institutions. Their task, we argue, is increasingly to align biotechnological and social innovations and to stabilize them in order to enable democratic pluralism. Thus a legitimate and open space for experimenting with new biological forms of life is created which invites also experimenting with new forms of living together. Institutions should empathetically accompany individuals who are ready to experiment so that, in this triangulation between science, individuals and institutions, a space for the primacy of the political is created with the potential to redefine the common weal and the options for society and its individuals alike.

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PRINTED FROM MIT PRESS SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright The MIT Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MITSO for personal use (for details see www.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 19 December 2018